Tag Archives: Featured

4 Steps for Creating a Coaching Cycle Schedule

Goals and Motivation, Instructional Coaching, Organization

Earlier this week, I broke out the cool new pens I got for Christmas and got to work on putting together my coaching cycle schedule for this next quarter.

Creating new schedules throughout the year is a cool opportunity for us coaches. It’s kind of like having a mini beginning-of-school-year kick off more than just once :)

You get to reset and regroup for a new journey ahead with new “students” to motivate and move forward.

I know that sometimes creating a coaching cycle schedule can feel overwhelming, so I wanted to share the steps I use to simplify the process a bit and make it fun.

OK, now that we’ve got those steps and tips down, grab yourself a nice bright sheet of white paper and head over to the printer. I just designed a new Scheduling Tool I want to share with you.

It’s simple, fun, and includes space at the top to jot down a few goals for your upcoming coaching cycles. And because I think quotes are cool and inspiring, I included one of those too :)

Once you have it printed out, you can pop it in your Coaching Kit. I like to put mine front and center, along with a color coded index of the teachers I’ll be working with. You know me and color coding :) The colors help me quickly find the different “sections” for teachers. So when I head into a classroom, I can just whip my Kit right open to that color.

Want to learn more about how I work through coaching cycles? Check out the Walk Through a Coaching Cycle Workshop, where we walk through a full coaching cycle together.

I’ll also help answer some of those logistic questions that come up:

  • How many teachers do you work with during your coaching cycles?
  • How many observations and feedback meetings do you schedule x week?
  • Do you always set-up face-face feedback meetings, or do you use email at all?

Here’s what Nancy C. had to say about her Coaching Workshop experience:

“First of all, I want to tell you that I absolutely LOVE your documentation and your videos! What a fantastic package you’ve put together. This is only my second year as a Literacy Coach so I’m really just learning as I go along and your clear and concise way of explaining the coaching cycle is EXACTLY what I needed. I cannot thank you enough.

Here we go Coaching Cycles, here we go!! Whoop whoop.

Alright friend, I’m feeling really good about this second half of the school year. If there are any other topics or resources you’d like me to share heading into this year, be sure to let me know!

6 Tips for Effective Meeting Facilitation

Instructional Coaching, Organization, Teaching Tips, Time Management

Pop quiz time. Ready?

What is the number one, most valuable resource for coaches and teachers?

a. Coffee
b. Time
c. Post It Notes
d. Technology

And the answer is (I’ll bet you guessed it)…b!! TIME! (although maybe this could have been tied with a)

As you know, we really need every single minute of it to get done everything we need to get done in our busy days.

So there’s nothing worse than when our time is wasted.

And you know what one of the biggest culprits can be? Meaningless Meetings.

Sure, meetings (planning meetings, PD meetings, business related meetings) are an essential part of working in a school. But if run poorly, they can be a huge waste of time.

But good news! As coaches there’s something we can do about this.

We facilitate lots of meetings, so let’s make sure the ones we’re responsible for leading are meaning-FULL, not meaningless.

5-Tips-for-Facilitating-Planning

I thought it might be helpful if I walked you through a case study of what it can look like to put this plan into action.

OK. So earlier this week I facilitated a curriculum planning meeting with our fourth grade team. Here’s how I went about making sure I had all my ducks in a row and the meeting was a meaningful use of this team’s time.

1. Identify Outcomes and Create an Agenda

To help me identify an outcome for our time together that felt supportive to the team, I sent out an email the week prior to meeting with them. After I received their response, I was able to create a purposeful agenda aligned to their needs.

agenda-visual1

2. Provide Helpful Resources

I always try to think about what resources (books, videos, examples, planning templates, etc.) would support teachers in the work they’re setting out to accomplish. In this particular case, I thought it would be helpful to give them a planning template they could use to help them with the logistics that go into planning a Celebration of Learning.

How to Facilitate a Successful Meeting

3. Use Google Docs

In curriculum planning meetings, there’s frequently a good amount of collaborative work and thinking going on. Google Docs/Drive makes it super easy for me to capture this work and share it with the team afterwards.

How to Facilitate a Successful Planning Meeting

4. Listen First, Talk Second

I have lots of thoughts and ideas I’m excited to share with teachers in planning meetings. But I zip it up, and listen first. Then I can guide the discussion as needed with follow-up questions or suggestions.

How to Facilitate a Successful Meeting

5. Track Time and Keep it Tight

As the facilitator, it’s my role to track time and keep the team’s work on track. Since we only have 45 minutes for these planning meetings, this is super important. Including the estimated amount of time for each part of the agenda helps with this.

How to Facilitate a Successful Meeting

6. Identify Next Steps and Follow-Up

Don’t forget to leave 5 minutes at the end of your time to review what was covered and identify next steps. AND set a time/day for when you’ll follow-up.

steps

And BOOM! You’ve got yourself a meaning-FULL meeting.

If you have an upcoming meeting to facilitate, hopefully you can use these tips as a roadmap to get you started and check your work.

Have a question, or maybe a tip I didn’t include? Share it in the comments below.

Enjoy your weekend and I’ll talk to you soon!

ms-houser

 

 

P.S.  If you liked this post and found it helpful, I’d GREATLY appreciate if you helped me spread the word using the share buttons below. Thanks!

11 Things Coaches Should Look For in Classroom Observations

Instructional Coaching

I received a handout at a workshop I recently attended on different factors coaches can look for in classroom observations. Collecting quality evidence during observations and presenting it in a clear manner to teachers is such an important piece of improving teacher practice and student achievement…so this handout really got me thinking about what I look for during observations and what areas of feedback teachers tend to find most helpful during our follow-up discussions. I went ahead and whipped up an infographic based on my thinking. Take a peek and let me know what you think. Is there anything you would add?

Coaching-Infographic

Download the Free Observation Look-Fors Infographic

Thanks for reading,

ms-houser

Instructional Coaching Tools

Goals and Motivation, Instructional Coaching

Last week I shared the instructional coaching data tracker I use to help organize and reflect on my work in coaching cycles throughout the year.  In the post I mentioned that I use a variety of other coaching tools to document and organize work with individual teachers.  Here are a two of my most important.

Coaching Kick-Off Meeting

At the start of instructional coaching cycles, two of the most important things we can do as coaches is to establish a respectful and trusting rapport with our coachee and also show that we honor them as an adult learner. You can work to implement these two practices in part by setting up a Kick Off coaching meeting.  The first purpose of this time is to get to know your coachee as a teacher and learner.  The second purpose is to work together to identify a goal for your coaching cycle. In having this kick off coaching conversation, you are establishing yourself as a “thinking partner” who is there to learn along with them. Additionally, you are setting routines and norms for your work together and clarifying logistics, which I have found helps in preventing potential misunderstandings down the road. Creating an agenda for this meeting helps to ensure that your time is purposeful and action-oriented.

Instructional Coaching Tools

Download your FREE Coaching Kick-Off Printable Here

Coaching Work Plan Tool

This is a great tool to help you craft a plan for your coaching goals, how you plan to arrive at these goals, and the results of your work.  After the Kick-Off meeting, I set-up a Goal Setting meeting with teachers and use this tool to guide our conversation.  I’ll revisit it throughout the coaching cycle to ensure that our work is staying on track.  In the final coaching wrap-up meeting I have with teachers, we review and document the results of our work using this tool.

Instructional Coaching Tools

Instructional Coaching Tools

Instructional Coaching Observation and Debrief Tool

This instructional coaching observation form is my go-to tool for all of my coaching observations and debrief conversations.  I record our coaching cycle goal at the top to ensure alignment between learning targets and look-fors in the lesson.  The listed debrief questions always serve as anchors for post observation conversations.  As far as instructional next steps, one thing I have learned is fewer is better!  Ensure that the teacher you are working with has identified and committed to 1-2 instructional next steps they feel will support student progress, but also feel manageable.

Instructional Coaching Tools

Instructional Coaching Tools

Download your FREE Coaching Kick-Off Printable Here

And for the complete
Simplified Coaching Planning Kit …

Simplified-Coaching-Planning-Kit-cover-image

Talk to you soon!

 

 

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